Election process under fire

Controversy surrounds elections for three of the four Class Boards for next year which were held over the past two weeks. In total, four grievances were filed against candidates. And in each case, the charges were dismissed and the accused candidate was elected to office. During Senior Class Board elections, presidential candidate Jason Diaz's campaign filed a complaint against fellow candidate Loren Mendell. Diaz, a Wharton junior, accused Mendell of distributing flyers illegally, according to the Class Boards Election Code. The Senior Class Board decided, after almost two hours of debate, that Mendell, a College junior, did not violate the code, and he was elected president by majority vote. This Monday, run-offs were held for the Sophomore and Junior Class Board elections. Two of the three run-offs were plagued by grievance charges which referred to section 2.e. of the code, preventing candidates from campaigning or leaving campaign material within 75 feet of the polling area. Current Junior Class Election Chairperson Leonard Cooperman said Tuesday night that the candidates were "in violation of the code but they did not bias the code." Although the elections are now over, many are pointing to flaws in the system and hoping changes will be made. One such flaw concerns candidates manning the polling stations. The polling places at the Class of 1996 Board election were controlled by candidates of the Class of 1997, while Class of 1996 candidates controlled the polls for the Class of 1997, Undergraduate Assembly Chairperson Dan Debicella said last night. "I saw candidates who were manning the polls of the other classes," the Wharton sophomore said. "You can't have candidates running elections even if it isn't their own elections." He added that this was the "main problem" of the elections and led to "a lot of the grievances." Senior Class Vice President Robbyn Leventhal said she had not known about the polling problem, but disapproved of the way polling was handled. "They probably should have had the newly-elected Senior Class Board run the [Sophomore and Junior] elections," the College senior said. "They could have had one table and one set of people doing it -- so there wouldn't have been a bias." Debicella said the decisions made regarding the grievances, which were considered technical violations and still dismissed, were "absolutely proper." "It's the spirit of the law, rather the letter of the law which has to be maintained," he said. "If someone is making a mild violation, you shouldn't disqualify someone. "But if someone is sitting at the polls actively campaigning, that's something that will grossly bias the election," Debicella added. But Leventhal said it was "contradictory" to say the candidates were in violation of the code while dismissing the charges at the same time. "If they did not agree that a grievance should be filed for that part of the code, then they shouldn't have had it in the election code at all," she said. "If they are going to make the rules, they should follow them." Debicella said the Nominations and Elections Committee, which currently runs the UA elections, should "take a role" in the Class Boards elections in the future. Another issue the election raises is whether grievance hearings should be closed or open to the public. NEC Fair Practice Code hearings, which are held to discuss grievances in the UA election, are open to the public. Debicella said the UA was "representative student government," making it "crucial that every single event that the UA does which will significantly effect the students is open to the public." Debicella said he is not familiar with the reasons behind the Class Board's closed hearings, but said the two situations might be different because "the Class Boards are a social organization and the UA is student government." Leventhal said the Class Board's closed door hearings was "something we never talked about." "I guess it would be better to have an open hearing so no one would think that anything was being done illegally or anyone was being discriminated against," she said. But, she added, "it was something that had been there before and we weren't really worrying about the grievance situation until it really happened."